"Wild spinach about 7 feet tall and fully mature. Well-fed wild spinach is well-branched and produces a huge quantity of seeds when mature. The leaves are still edible at this stage but are reduced in quality, taking on a somewhat off-flavor. According to research on other mature plants, the leaves on these older plants retain most of their nutrients and phytochemicals as long as they are still green." (Left: The author stands in for perspective, 2006.)Imagine what you could do with eighteen delicious new greens in your dining arsenal including purslane, chickweed, curly dock, wild spinach, sorrel, and wild mustard.
John Kallas makes it fun and easy to learn about foods you've unknowingly passed by all your life. Through gorgeous photographs, playful, but authoritative text, and ground-breaking design he gives you the knowledge and confidence to finally begin eating and enjoying edible wild plants.
Edible Wild Plants divides plants into four flavor categories -- foundation, tart, pungent, and bitter. Categorizing by flavor helps readers use these greens in pleasing and predictable ways. According to the author, combining elements from these different categories makes the best salads.
This field guide is essential for anyone wanting to incorporate more natural and whole foods into their diet. First ever nutrient tables that directly compare wild foods to domesticated greens are included. Whether looking to enhance a diet or identify which plants can be eaten for survival, the extensive information on wild foods will help readers determine the appropriate stage of growth and how to properly prepare these highly nutritious greens.
John Kallas is one of the foremost authorities on North American edible wild plants and other foragables. He's learned about wild foods through formal academic training and over 35 years of hands-on field research. John has a doctorate in nutrition, a master's in education, and degrees in biology and zoology.
He's a trained botanist, nature photgrapher, writer, researched, and teacher. In 1993 he founded the Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables along with its educational branch, Wild Food Adventures.
John's company is based in Portland, Oregon, where he offers regional workshops, and multi-day intensives on wild foods.
For more information, see www.wildfoodadventures.com
Like so many of us, historians are guilty of taking trees for granted. The history of trees in America is no less than the history of the United States itself—from the majestic pines of the East coveted by the King of England for British warships to the orange groves of California, which lured settlers west. Without trees, there would have been no ships, railroads, stockyards, furniture, wagons, barrels, or firewood. Never before has anyone ever treated our country’s trees as the subject of a broad historical and cultural study, and the result is an accessible, informative, and thoroughly entertaining read.
As symbols of liberty, community, and civilization, trees are perhaps the loudest silent figures in America’s complicated history. The journey of how forests morphed from dark, unmapped infinities, to vast timber reserves essential to the creation of the American empire, and finally to sanctuaries of nature is a complex tale. Americans started as people frightened of the woods, became a nation that depended upon its forests for progress and profit, and finally arrived at the present point. Today, few people know where timber comes from or can name many tree species, but most of us share a sense that to destroy trees is to destroy part of ourselves.
Audacious in its 400-year scope, authoritative in its detail, and elegant in its execution, this one-of-a-kind read is perfect for history buffs and nature lovers alike.
Were Thomas Jefferson to walk the grounds of Monticello today, he would no doubt feel fully at home in the 1,000-foot terraced vegetable garden where the very vegetables and herbs he favored are thriving. Extensively and painstakingly restored under Peter J. Hatch's brilliant direction, Jefferson's unique vegetable garden now boasts the same medley of plants he enthusiastically cultivated in the early nineteenth century. The garden is a living expression of Jefferson's genius and his distinctly American attitudes. Its impact on the culinary, garden, and landscape history of the United States continues to the present day.
Graced with nearly 200 full-color illustrations, "A Rich Spot of Earth" is the first book devoted to all aspects of the Monticello vegetable garden. Hatch guides us from the asparagus and artichokes first planted in 1770 through the horticultural experiments of Jefferson's retirement years (1809–1826). The author explores topics ranging from labor in the garden, garden pests of the time, and seed saving practices to contemporary African American gardens. He also discusses Jefferson's favorite vegetables and the hundreds of varieties he grew, the half-Virginian half-French cuisine he developed, and the gardening traditions he adapted from many other countries.
National Book Award–winner Timothy Egan turns his historian's eye to the largest-ever forest fire in America and offers an epic, cautionary tale for our time.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men to fight the fires, but no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them. Egan recreates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, and the larger story of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, that follows is equally resonant. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. Even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by his rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service in ways we can still witness today.
How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect’s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they actually remember the weather?
For centuries we have collectively marveled at plant diversity and form—from Charles Darwin’s early fascination with stems to Seymour Krelborn’s distorted doting in Little Shop of Horrors. But now, in What a Plant Knows, the renowned biologist Daniel Chamovitz presents an intriguing and scrupulous look at how plants themselves experience the world—from the colors they see to the schedules they keep. Highlighting the latest research in genetics and more, he takes us into the inner lives of plants and draws parallels with the human senses to reveal that we have much more in common with sunflowers and oak trees than we may realize. Chamovitz shows how plants know up from down, how they know when a neighbor has been infested by a group of hungry beetles, and whether they appreciate the Led Zeppelin you’ve been playing for them or if they’re more partial to the melodic riffs of Bach. Covering touch, sound, smell, sight, and even memory, Chamovitz encourages us all to consider whether plants might even be aware of their surroundings.
A rare inside look at what life is really like for the grass we walk on, the flowers we sniff, and the trees we climb, What a Plant Knows offers us a greater understanding of science and our place in nature.